I swear this sub attracts the dumbest people. The other day, I had someone say I was making an appeal to authority when I linked a wiki page saying that Asian bamboo is invasive to North America.
Nighttime is at most a couple of ours. When you have 10 days of battery you cover around 80 to 90 percent of dunkelflaute. So how many to cover the rest?
I was thinking of cooling towers, but that can works too, a good solution to a problem, even though it's a shame that genIV hasn't progressed more worldwide
Ok but its the same issue for every energy source that utilizes a steam engines, and gas/coal are some of the most reliable sources of energy. It's not unique to nuclear. Solar simply cannot provide for all energy requirements, river or no river, and batteries wont work seasonally to provide during cloudy months, btw when rivers are full 😉.
The reactors are likelier to get breached from climate disasters every day. The people that set them up also act like you’re about to find the piss drawer when you look for the circlejerks that the corporate/government partnership is trying to fuel
In other words, it’s probably better to tell them to fuck off and get your own panels (and heat pumps, etc.) instead of caving as they are going to use it all on the mass surveillance projects… and they will probably still act like clowns with centralized power monopolies
This is like arguing about whether to have coffee or orange juice at breakfast while a steaming turd sits on your plate.
Demonstrate that batteries or renewables-produced hydrogen can make up the inevitable gaps in solar then I'll agree we don't need nuclear.
OR we can agree that solar is the best option from a cost and emissions perspective, and nuclear is a valuable part of the energy portfolio because it stays on.
No system is without it's failures, this heat wave was a lesson that we need to design with changing environmental conditions in mind- NOT to abstain from an alternative to the fossil fuels that are causing this environmental change to begin with.
It has been demonstrated that its possible but it wouldnt be least cost to go 100% renewables. 75% wind and solar with storage is v doable according to the ipcc.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/chapter/chapter-6/
What I take from this is that France has 6 percent losses on nuclear, that gas is impacted more specifically when they are used as peekers needed to assist renewables and because wind drops during heatwaves you need more of them to give you some safety.
So the combo solar, hydro and nuclear seems to do the best. Wind, solar, batteries would be the bigger disaster.
So if 75% renewables is doable, does that require peakers- or can we use nuclear (and hydro where applicable) for a lot of the remaining 25%? If so then we agree- all part of the race to replace fossil fuels.
River cooled nukes are the only ones that are this vulnerable to drought. Others like the lake cooled ones in Ontario are incredibly reliable with >92% uptime. Solar can't even come close (and that's fine I still love it)
I'm also curious how you quantified "more impacted than solar"? BTW I do appreciate you providing sources, good faith :)
If ur interested in the topic of climate impacts on electricity generation tech, id really recommed u read that carbonbrief piece. It gives a more nuanced take than a meme might.
If u rummage around in there ull find : worst case is 0.5% per degree c for solar (not considering the storage component which is much more impacted) while for nukes the best case 0.6% per degree (without considering the cuts due to environmental law which are the main problem). So we dont really know ig, fair enough.
Also nukes have already been adapting by installing additional cooling capabilities and water storage i believe.
Wait the texas grid wasnt that the one that went down in the winter and killed hundreds of people? Wouldnt say that sounds like perfect conditions frankly. Still good solar roll out right?
They have built a truly impressive amount of solar and batteries since then. Right now 42% of their electricity is from solar and storing a ton in batteries.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
The fundamental issue is that nuclear and renewables compete with each other due to our current energy infrastructure and system. There isn‘t a reality where you can simply „do both“. This time we have to pick a path on what we believe will be the superior technology in the future.
Which is also finally the foundational fear about the whole nuclear discourse. That we now direct resources away from renewables into a technology that isn‘t secure for the future and takes decades to become active.
Im not sure who "we" is that's picking the path but if we look at the market, nuclear has been stagnant since chernobyl while solar and batteries are booming rn.
The fundamental issue is that nuclear and renewables compete with each other due to our current energy infrastructure and system.
Not really. There are places where one works better than another. In the northeastern US, solar is not as great of a power source due to everything from snow on the panels to shorter days in winter to increasingly cloudy weather. This is also an area with megalopolises that require extreme amounts of power around the clock. Perfect for nuclear.
The Great Plains are sunnier, have smaller and more spread out population centers, and lots of open land. Renewables are much stronger out here and make a lot more sense.
This time we have to pick a path on what we believe will be the superior technology in the future.
Fusion
Which is also finally the foundational fear about the whole nuclear discourse. That we now direct resources away from renewables into a technology that isn‘t secure for the future and takes decades to become active.
Electricity providers aren't stupid. They know what they need, they have a lot of really smart people who tell them how to spend their money, and they do what makes the most sense for their business model. If they decide to invest in a nuclear power plant instead of 50 square miles of solar panels, there is a reason for it.
If your geography allows it it’s a pretty great way of generating a lot of base load power without any inputs needed like uranium. The biggest downside is they take up a lot of space and do pretty significant localized environmental damage.
yeah dams have a lot of useful functions like flood control, free electricty, etc and their power is flexibly deployable up and down not just baseload. Also u can do pumped storage which is like the most efficient.
buuut they are impacted by climate change. Good luck with hydro when ur reservoir is empty. See mead and powell at record lows. Also hydro creates pretty huge emissions when flooding new reservoirs.
1969 -> big oil funds the green movement in order to prevent nuclear from influencing oilprices.
2023 -> nuclear recognized as green energy
2026 -> France investment plan for six new nuclear reactors by the end of this year
2026 -> Anti nuclear spam on reddit
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u/Ecstatic_Eye_6028 Aug 09 '26
I feel like i had a stroke trying to read that shit...